Do you think the world has become a better place or a worse place to live in??

yep. i'd rather choose to have a simple life. less stress, less pressure and less expectations. you just be happy just being able to survive a day, have a small amount on the bank for savings, have nice people around you. it's simple happiness but i'd go for it than be rich with a stressful life.

Good points, Michelle, simplicity is the best, today's life does have too much stress, and then people have to get their own therapists and that's a stress on it's own, it's like a vicious cycle. I try my best to enjoy even the simplest pleasures, like running water for example, which is one good thing about today's world, but this is really tricky one for me. I think in some ways the world has become so much better, where we have almost eradicated slavery and yet we replaced that with racism, we bridged the gap between people with technology, yet we segregated people on the basis of their differences and went to war with each other. I don't know, it's like the more I get into it, the more entwined it seems, it's a difficult question to answer and that's why I didn't contribute much when I started. But I do agree with you and and with you too, maryanne, that the goodness of simplicity can reduce so much pressure off of our backs.

ok, but don't you think the advancement in other fields including technology is also there, and I like to think that I have an open mind about that.

I do agree that it is a mixture of both bad and good. But murder, theft, corruption, this stuff has been around for a long time, and has been with us since time began. It's not a new trend, yes, of course, now we are more aware of it, because of media and because the world has become a smaller place now because of air travel and internet and other technology, but I believe that the other bad stuff has already been around, look at our history, it's filled with wars, and massacres and crimes and executions. And actually in most countries, statistics say that crimes have gone down. But that's just my view, I like to be the optimist.

values, values, values, I think they are still pretty much alive, just a little more educated, I mean family values still exist and I do believe that the institutions of family and marriage will never go obsolete no matter what people think. There are still true people out there, and there have been liars and deceivers even in older times. I think it's good that today a person can accept their family values but not be governed by them in a blind faith. Everyone is allowed to question their existence, and faith. That's free will. That's human nature, it's just more popular today, that's it, but it has always existed, I can tell you that for sure.

Well, there are increasing tensions and have been in all times, but I guess it's how we take that all in stride, and how we perceive it and what we do about it. Do we just label it as hell and give up or do we try to make an individual difference?

Yeah, I totally agree, most of the problems in todays world are not murders or thefts but politics, these politicians who try to convince us that their actions have meaning but they're just doing everything for themselves and not the people. Of course, technology is the plus in today's world and I too think that people of different races have come so much closer, although politicians would like to convince us otherwise. All in all, I guess it's a yin yang situation, where there's some good and some bad about today's world. I think our problems are more environmental and political these days than anything else, and sadly those two also happen to be related in a twisted way.

yeah, I do agree that there are two sides to the story, but when it comes to war and racial unrest, that has always been around, and as much as it seems bad to us today, I really think that we have come a long way, and it might not seem that way to us, but it has actually become better. It's just that now we have all the information of all the bad things around the world but take a community like my lot, for example, we're all people of different races here, and we can talk to each other about everything, that wasn't possible before not just in terms of technology but other barriers as well.